About

Welcome! My name is Gabriel and I am a design researcher at IDEO and an affiliate faculty member at the Emerson College Engagement Lab. Broadly, my work and research bring together technology, media and community building.

I have a background in industry and academic research, as well as arts and activism. At Emerson College I teach courses on digital media as well qualitative research methods to graduate students. Prior to IDEO I was a research associate at the Emerson College Engagement Lab, conducting traditional scholarly research on civic media innovation in the United States, as well as applied research using augmented reality technology as a means for archiving and communicating local history in communities facing gentrification. I hold a PhD in Information Studies from Syracuse University, where my research focused on learning, collaboration, and governance on large scale online communities. Publications from my work at Emerson and Syracuse can be found here.

I am the founder of the Transformative Culture Project, a Boston based nonprofit that engages young people in telling stories about activists, artists, and educators in their community. With French 2D, I am the co-founder of Place/Setting, a social art installation designed to host intimate dinner conversations made semi-transparent so as to communicate how ideas are shared within and amongst individuals, organizations, and experts in various contexts. From 2015-2017 I was a research affiliate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.